Rafe (10 page)

The same moon that lit the pitbuck compound so brilliantly left the lower gallery deep in shadow. Ezra sat in the cane wicker chair and stared straight ahead into the darkness. Somewhere in the distance a bull alligator roared mightily and a big cat screamed. Closer to the house, a myriad of wings and legs scraped jagged edges to produce a chitinous, shrill and never-ending song. Frogs with swollen throats piped and thrummed to their own time. The silence of the country was, in truth, silence in name only.

A soft thump sounded on the porch. Ezra stirred. The Negro boy had fallen asleep, his head thudding back against the post. The white man flicked his cane against the pale soles and the boy jumped alert. “Get out of here. Go on to bed.”

“Yassuh,” a disembodied voice mumbled from the darkness. A black form moved like a shadow through the door.

Ezra poured himself another drink. Four years. More like five of hard work. And he'd built it from nothing. Ten miserable slaves, a house falling apart, a weak woman with a weaker, useless brother-in-law. Well, he'd done it and Freedom was his. Almost two hundred slaves. The pitbucks. Good cotton and sugar cane. The best rum west of New Orleans. There were damned few plantations in this part of the country in as good shape.

He thought bitterly of the big, fancy plantations farther east on the Mississippi. He would have one someday. Before too many more years passed he would show his face again and damn any man who tried to say him nay. He wasn't the only one who'd carried messages for the British. Some wealthier than he, and they were free to live without encumbrance. He would be too, for money bought all things. Even honor.

Four years. And she had to come back. What had she said? Almost another month and she'd be twenty-one. He searched for the date, found it in the troubled, rum-soaked reaches of his mind. June 22, 1820. Her majority. And under the terms of her father's will, she would legally own half the plantation. Damn her for a minx! That handshake. The look she'd given him when she saw the picture had been removed. She wouldn't be another Micara, to be filled with sherry and forgotten.

But something … something. The paper, of course. Signed and sealed. If she'd accept it without a fight. No fights now. He'd have to try to neutralize her some other way. Save the paper for a last resort. Perhaps Steve would help. Steven Bennett. He was foolish enough to be in love with her. Perhaps she would marry him and he'd take her away. A shame, really. Such a nice body. Too bad he wouldn't be able to play with her, and enjoy that ripeness.

Whatever happened would have to be soon. She wasn't a woman to wait and he hadn't worked all these years to lose everything. Wealth and power had always come easily to Lucas Clayton but Ezra had to fight for everything he wanted. Wasn't fair. Damn Lucas, too. Now it was little brother's turn.

Ezra looked around him. Familiar surroundings. Freedom, by God. Freedom to do whatever the goddamned hell he wanted to do and with whomever he wanted. Freedom to show them all. The only time he'd ever known freedom, held it in his hands. He meant to keep it, whatever the cost. The little vixen. Lithesome young woman. Fancy riding her himself. Drive it deep and make her scream like Julie. Like Julie.…

He pushed himself from the chair and grabbing the bottle, lurched into the house, sudden desire driving him on in spite of the liquor. The hall was dark and quiet, the stairs a faintly gleaming pathway he followed. In his bedroom a single candle flickered and sent a hundred shadows twisting in a macabre black dance. The figure on his bed stirred, rose and came to him across the candle's yellow glow. Julie halted a moment and let her master appraise her as he always did.

Ezra's lust reached fever-pitch at the sight of her dusky, nubile form. The small, rounded breasts, upturned nipples dark and tightening beneath his stare, the slim curvature of her hips and thighs, the still darker musky shadow of her womanhood. She came to him. Unbuttoning his clothes, she covered each new section of revealed flesh with a flurry of kisses until every restraint burst and he dragged her to her feet and flung her across the edge of the bed. “I'll ride you, bitch,” he growled, spreading her legs and planting his feet between them. “I'll ride you to the ground.”

He grabbed her hips and raised her buttocks to him, entered violently and rammed himself against her over and over again until the black girl tore the sheet with her teeth to keep from screaming beneath his cruel debauchery. The bloodlust raging, he thrust deeper and deeper, more and more brutally, until at last his sudden shuddering climax stiffened him against her. Seconds later he withdrew and left her moaning, gingerly dragging her bruised flesh the rest of the way onto the bed.

The lord of Freedom walked to the center of the room, eyes glinting with malicious purpose even in repose. He extinguished the candle and crossed to the window. Across the line of trees in the near distance the terrible spikes of the pitbuck compound jabbed holes in the night sky. He could see in his mind's eye the pit beyond. There in the massive hole in the earth lay his true satisfaction: to feel his will manifest. And more. The raw primeval contest. Sweating flesh ripe for puncture, ready to be torn by the vicious teeth of death by machete, axe or knife. To command, to watch men bleed and die, there was release beyond all lust.

“Stop your sobbing, bitch,” he said over his shoulder. “It pleasured you more than me. There'll be more this night. You'll earn your keep, earn the easy life I've given you. Keep food in that black belly and the whip off your back.”

He left the window and returned to the bed, reached out and pulled her close to him. “Or maybe it's time I found another pretty and gave you to Butkis. Let you bend your back with the other darkies.”

Julie's eyes widened fearfully, the pain in her belly not nearly so terrible as the fear of being sent to live with the field hands. “Oh gawd, Massuh Clayton. Please. Yo' … yo' de on'y man ken make me happy. Ah's jes' cryin' cause Ah'm so glad to be yo' special woman.”

Ezra grinned. He pressed her face against his swollen abdomen, forced her head down farther to the moist hair and damp, sagging organ. He held her there while she cooed and kissed him, licked and teased, her fingers tracing gentle patterns on his flesh. He remained so much limp meat.

The pit … think of the pit
. The Creek staring at the shattered blade poking from his stomach like some horrid steel growth. Rafe sliced and bleeding from leg and back.
Up, damn you, up, up
. The fist … the splintering pop of bone and crushed neck. The spurting lifeless seed, pale white as death itself.

“Use your mouth, damn you, use it.…”

Straining to be hard again … the brave twisting the broken handle deeper and deeper, ripping, ripping flesh.…

The black girl moaned, used every bit of artistry she could summon to finish the job before he exploded in rage. Her hands roved wildly, teasing, probing, exciting until the soft meat swelled and hardened in her mouth. Her lips pursed, slid back and forth. Now larger, almost large enough, now touching the back of her throat. Sensing the moment, she tightened her mouth in time to receive the jetting fluid.

The devil within him appeased, Ezra collapsed on the bed, spent. Sunday there would be more to be remembered. Enough to glut the coming nights. The bottle slipped from his hand and bounced on the floor. Ezra Clayton slept.

6

Morning was cooler than noonday sun, but not by much. The guards' barracks, sweaty air tinged with smell of unwashed bodies and clothes, came to life slowly and with much grumbling and muttering after an alcohol- and sex-filled weekend. Twenty-five of Freedom's thirty-seven guards, and every one of them complaining, bitching about the heat and the day ahead. Ten would relieve the night guards, five of whom were covering the river, the others riding the land boundary of the plantation. Ten would watch the fields and ride herd over the almost two hundred cotton and cane workers. That left five, led by Butkis, to relieve the two night guards on the pitbuck compound. They were responsible for the training of Ezra Clayton's elite.

“You see her?”

“Hell yes, I seen her.”

“Shit you did, Milo.”

“I did. Me and Decater both seen her, didn't we, Decater?”

“Sho 'nuff did. Prettier'n a twenty-dollar whore. Stand-in' right out on the gallery staring into the night, over to that nigger Ephraim's grove.”

“How come I never seen her then?”

“ 'Cause it taken you too long ta' get a hard-on. She already gone back inside and blowed out the light 'fore you could get that teensy little tug-mutton a' yourn up an' off.”

“You both full a' bastard shit.”

Milo's large ungainly head rose sharply and he brandished his straight razor menacingly. The blade held steady less than six inches from Boo's neck. “You best start watchin' yore mouth, Boo, less'n I be havin' to cut you another'n.”

“Both you can shut yer damn traps,” Butkis snarled from the doorway. He removed his seaman's cap and wiped the sweat from his forehead onto the sleeve of his shirt. “They's work to be done an' I want all your red asses outside on the double.” Milo cleaned his razor and slipped it into the case in his back pocket without paying attention to Boo, who turned and sulked back to get his shoes. Butkis walked out to the grounds, not bothering to wait and assure himself the two feuding guards had obeyed his command. He knew they would.

The remaining guards hurried back to their dressing, disappointed in not having seen a little blood flow. Baggy trousers and shirts on, each man crossed to the barrack's musket and sword racks to gather up and prime muskets and pistols, run whetstones along the edges of sabers, knives and machetes. Each guard was issued a brace of .62 caliber J. Henry pistols, a musket or rifle, and no less than one edged weapon. The personal arsenal of each man was more than sufficient to cow the unarmed field workers. As for the pitbucks, though they might hold their overseers in contempt, they dared not overlook the weaponry arrayed against them. Only a year ago Milo had stopped three of their number from escaping when they rushed the lone guard, expecting an easy kill. Instead, Milo fired his musket and gutshot the leader, then drew his pistols and fired at pointblank range at the other two. The two died immediately, the heavy lead balls nearly taking off their heads. The gutshot pitbuck was left to writhe in the dust as an example for any other who might want to try to escape. He lingered for eight painful hours before his screams faded and died out.

Butkis waited for the men to pile out into the bright morning sun, then assigned them in order as they left their sleeping quarters. The first into the yard got the easier, cooler assignments down by the river. Latecomers were sent to the fields. Milo, third out, surprised Butkis by requesting to be sent to watch the sugar cane gang.

“It's gonna be hotter'n hell out there today, Milo. I kinda figgered on keepin' you in the pitbuck compound with me, workin' them fightin' bucks. How come you wanna watch them cane niggers?”

“Cause Ruby's out there in them cane fields,” Boo interjected, snickering, “an' Milo didn't get enuf a' her sugar yestiday.”

A foursome of other guards joined in with Boo's laughter. Milo scowled at them, cursing them all for revealing his intentions. A glance from Butkis quieted the jeering guards. “You best come with me, Milo. I catch a man diddlin' with some darkie drippin' pan durin' work time and I'll cut me a slice a' his white ass with this toad sticker.” He patted the hilt of his cutlass. “Even if it is meant for niggers. Boo, you and yore good friends there can take the cane fields.”

“Aw, shit,” moaned Boo. “It's gonna be hotter'n nine hells out there. Give 'em to Milo. He don't care nohow.”

“You shoulda kept yore mouth shut, Boo,” grumbled one of the other four.

“Git,” Butkis ordered.

The five set off at a trot to round up the detachment of cane workers and take them to the fields.

“Let's roust out them pitbucks. Time to get their black asses movin',” Ezra's brutal leader ordered. Milo shrugged, disgusted with the way his plans had fallen apart. He'd just have to get that Boo someday, he figured, falling in line just behind Butkis and following him to the compound.

Crissa awoke to a sound she had not heard in years. The lonely, keening wail of a working spiritual drifted on the still morning air. Mournful, rhythmic, a ballad for the lost and hopeless, a chart for the weary and the tired, undercurrent to swinging scythe, chopping machete and yanking, straining muscles. A song of the oppressed, a tune with which another day's burden might be carried. Hauntingly beautiful and tragic, the melody was the child of incomprehension, birthed in the pain of scarred and battered souls.

The night had passed fitfully. Crissa dreamt of a mother she had known, loved, called her own. A mother who looked a stranger now. Someone she didn't know, yet strangely, still loved. Micara had aged so. True, the plantation flourished and prospered since her marriage to Ezra, yet Micara seemed more a trapped invalid who smiled on command rather than a woman revelling in her own success. She had wept and fussed over the return of her daughter appropriately enough, but her display of emotion seemed exhaustive, dry and shrivelled at the core. And Ezra.…

When Crissa left Fitzman's Freedom for Boston, Clayton was a slightly built, dashing man of grace and sophisticated charm. Now he appeared so … so degenerate. The hard, mocking eyes full of secrets. Tiny hands clenched in tight little fists. White, protected skin, almost as pale as the shock of ghostly hair. The bloated torso astride those spindly legs. His veneer of cordiality made him seem even more grotesque. She distrusted him.

And the household was totally changed. Old and trusted servants had been sent to the fields—or worse, Micara had hinted during a rare lull in the conversation—and replaced by Negroes of Ezra's choosing. Lithe, attractive, arrogant creatures subservient only to Ezra, they treated Micara with conceited, knowing deference. Crissa flushed angrily as she recalled their attitude, rose from the bed and crossed to her window where she held back the curtain to peer out at her first morning back at home. A score of ragged, tattered Negroes tramped by, two men with rifles urging them on. The blacks passed out of range, their song drifting back to her. The guards bothered her. They had never needed guards at Freedom before. Why now? And armed to the teeth, at that. The only time one needed guards was when slaves were unhappy and rebellious. She couldn't imagine such conditions on what had at one time been a happy plantation.